A disturbing message was left for a Muslim family on the 4th of July. The word "Terrorist" was spray painted on their house. Tonight, police and the F.B.I. are getting involved.

"It started from here, to all the way down there," said Tahir Khan, the homeowner. It was a message he was eager to wipe away. "We had a plan to barbecue yesterday but all my family, my kids and my wife we got so upset we did nothing, we just stayed quietly home." The Pakistani family moved to the United States in the 70's. They've lived at their home in north central San Antonio for more than 18 years. "This is a nice, peaceful neighborhood where we have Jews, Muslims, Christians -- we all live like a family down here."

The family was watching a 4th of July parade when this all happened. It was a neighbor who noticed the message on the side of the house. "He brought me here and said 'Did you see this?' and I said 'Wow I didn't know that.' It was written right there from top to bottom the word terrorist," said Khan. But the trouble didn't stop there, later that night someone set fireworks off on the Kahn's front porch, rang the doorbell and ran away.

"(After) everything that we do, it still feels like we're not doing enough," said Sarwat Husain, spokeswoman for the San Antonio Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Husain says over the July 4th holiday this and four other crimes against local Muslim families have been reported. "It's the similar cases where the remarks were written on the walls on the house, in one case the windows were broken."

The Khans' say no family should have to endure this. "I do not want this to happen to someone else or hurt somebody or somebody got so upset if something happens on their house, they do something wrong."

This year, 13 crimes have been reported to the C.A.I.R. Last year, there were 21. Because a lot of these families fear retaliation and never file police reports, the crimes are never investigated. The Kahn family has contacted the police and the F.B.I.